


something richer

by wayfarer



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Time Travel, eliot sends the letter at the end of s05e02 bc fuck canon and also this entire show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:28:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22569409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfarer/pseuds/wayfarer
Summary: Dear Q, the letter reads.This is going to sound insane, but I'm writing to you from the future.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 71
Kudos: 522





	something richer

**Author's Note:**

> s05e02 had me putting on my clown makeup only to disappoint me in s05e03, so here we are. for those of you who aren't watching the season, quick recap: in s05e02 eliot and margo find special fillorian stamps that allow you to write to anyone anywhere anytime. at the end of the episode, it shows eliot holding a letter addressed to quentin from before he went to the seam. in s05e03, eliot decides not to send it because he's worried about what could go wrong if they try to change the past. in this fic, he decides to send it at the end of s05e02, so everything that happened in s05e03 and onward is no longer relevant
> 
> title from cruel world by active child because it's one of my favorite songs but now i can't listen to it without bursting into tears and that's just one of the many crimes of this tv show

Margo once told him that she knew magic was real, but she didn’t believe in it. Back then, he didn’t understand how you could have one without the other. Suffice to say, he gets it now. 

He can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment when the novelty of magic wore off for him. Maybe it was when he found out his father had brain cancer or when he had his first depressive episode after starting at Brakebills and he had the cruel realization that there are some things magic just can’t fix. Maybe it was when Alice died. Maybe it was when he lost a family he never actually had in the quest to get it back. Maybe it was when he realized that for every problem they fix, another five pop up in its place – a chain reaction that seems to always leave them even more fucked than they were before. 

Even with the semblance of the plan they’ve come up with to save Eliot, he still feels like he can’t breathe. He hasn’t been able to since he got his memories back, not really. It’s like there’s a vise inside of him that tightens a little more every day, squeezing and crushing, robbing him of air and hope and everything good he’s managed to carve out for himself until he’s left with nothing but the tightness in his chest and the black, all-encompassing feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. 

After all these months there’s an end in sight and all he can think is, _how are we going to inevitably fuck everything up?_

It’s kind of a lot, so when Alice asks to talk to him for a second after they’ve all dispersed to prepare for their part of the plan, he blows her off. He just needs a few minutes to gather himself before it’s time, so he gives her an apologetic smile but he doesn’t stop his trek up the stairs. 

He automatically starts toward his room before he remembers he doesn’t have a room in the cottage anymore. None of them do. It’s been months since he’s technically been a student at Brakebills, and even longer for some of the others. All of their rooms have long since been given to other students. There’s nothing left for him here. It’s a jarring thought, one that threatens to tighten that vise even more, so he changes paths and heads toward one of the bathrooms instead. 

For all everything else has changed, it’s just as he remembers it. Namely, kind of gross. There’s everything from bottles of lotion to hair spray to lube covering every flat surface of the room and no less than three wet towels on the floor. One of the shelves by the shower appears to have been ripped off the wall, but the salad bowl of condoms resting on the back of the toilet is present and fully stocked. 

He moves a hairbrush in the sink off to the side and turns on the faucet, letting his fingers dangle under the stream. It’s an old habit – magic has ensured that hot water never needs time to warm up in the cottage – but it’s one he’s never managed to break. He leans down and splashes a few handfuls on his face, scrubbing at his eyes and then running them through his hair. It was Brian who decided he was in desperate need of a haircut, but Quentin’s found he doesn’t mind it so much either. It makes him feel a little more grown up even if it is strange not feeling the brush of hair on his shoulders anymore.

He blinks a few times to clear the water droplets from his eyelashes as he reaches to turn off the handle. Then he blinks a few more times because there’s an envelope tucked behind the faucet that decidedly hadn’t been there before. 

_To: Quentin Coldwater. Before He Went To The Seam._

His heart starts pounding in his chest even as the rest of his body locks up because that – that is unmistakably Eliot’s handwriting. He’d recognize it anywhere. His mind immediately starts racing to find a logical explanation. An extremely cruel prank. A delayed arrival spell like that time in Fillory. The Monster. Hallucination.

It takes a moment before he works up the nerve to reach for it. It’s definitely real – it’s made out of a thick, buttery soft paper much nicer than anything he’s ever seen before. It also doesn’t explode on contact, which he had only somewhat been expecting. The paper wobbles from how badly his hands are trembling and water from his fingers soak into the edges as he pulls out the letter. 

_Dear Q_ , the letter reads. _This is going to sound insane, but I’m writing to you from the future._

“Holy shit.”

_There are so many things I want to say to you, but if by some miracle this works, then I’ll have the chance to say it all in person. So, for now, let’s stick to the basics. First things first: your plan is going to work. You’re going to save me. You’re going to save everyone. But some things go wrong in the process, so I need you to do a couple of things for me._

Penny and Julia are talking quietly in the nook by the window when Quentin gets downstairs and he makes a beeline towards them. He has no idea what his face looks like right now, but it’s enough to have both of them on their feet the second they catch sight of him. “Q, what’s wrong?” Julia asks, grabbing his wrist as soon as he’s within reaching distance. 

He can’t begin to answer that question, so he ignores her and turns to Penny instead. “I need to talk to you in private,” he says, voice low. He doesn’t see the others, but he knows at the very least Alice is somewhere in the cottage. He needs Penny for this next part, but everyone else – his mind is still reeling from everything he read, but he thinks this is something that as few people as possible should know about. 

“What’s going on?” Penny asks, eyeing him cautiously. Whether that’s because he thinks something catastrophic has gone wrong with the plan or because of the energy Quentin is putting out, it’s hard to say. He’s gotten better at shielding his mind after endless bitching from their Penny, but he’s so frazzled he’s not sure what’s leaking out. 

“Just – trust me. Please.” His voice breaks on the last word, but he doesn’t have it in him to be embarrassed right now.

Penny and Julia exchange a weighted look, seemingly having an entire conversation with their eyes. It’s happening more and more lately, but it’s still bizarre to witness considering her and their Penny mostly ignored each other when they weren’t being openly hostile. She’s already said nothing is going on between the two of them, but he’s less and less inclined to believe her as more time passes.

After a handful of seconds and one last pointed look from Julia, Penny says, “Fine” and takes off toward the front door without another word. 

Quentin twists the wrist she’s still grasping so he can press their palms together, giving her hand a quick squeeze. He recognizes the “ _we need to talk_ ” look on her face well after nearly two decades of friendship, but she doesn’t stop him from pulling free of her grip and making his way out onto the patio.

Penny is standing by the table waiting for him, arms crossed over his chest. Quentin can’t see anyone else outside, but that doesn’t mean no one is listening so he walks right up into Penny’s space, so close he has to crane his neck to look him in the eyes. That would have earned him a solid shove to the chest from their Penny, but this Penny just sighs and gives him an irritated look. 

“Alright, Coldwater,” Penny says. “What’s going on?”

“Uh, basically,” he says, a slight edge of hysteria in his voice. “Eliot sent me a letter from the future with a magical Fillorian stamp and gave me a list of things to do before going to the Seam.”

Penny stares at him. “A stamp,” he says, voice flat. 

“Yeah, Jane used it to – well, that doesn’t really matter right now.” Quentin pulls the envelope from his jacket pocket and holds it up. “It lets you send a letter to someone regardless of where or when they are.”

Penny looks like he thinks Quentin is completely full of shit, but he takes the envelope from his hand anyway. He studies it for a few seconds before he pulls the letter out, frowning down at it. Quentin lets him read just long enough to get through about half of it before he snatches both the letter and the envelope out of his hand and shoves them back into his pocket.

At Penny’s raised eyebrow, Quentin says, “The end is uh – private. Just for me. Neither of us want you to read it, believe me.”

“Right.” He draws out the word, but he looks slightly less skeptical than before. “So how do you know this isn’t just the Monster fucking with you? Pretty convenient timing considering we just came up with a plan to take him down.”

“Because the Monster’s idea of fucking with me is breaking my arm or making me help him dump a body, not mind games.” It’s not like the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. It was one of the first things he thought when he started reading, but then he read the rest of it and he knew. “There are things in that letter that – it’s Eliot, okay? I know it’s Eliot.”

“So what do you want me to do, exactly?”

“I need you to come with me.”

Penny looks like he’s about to protest, so Quentin says, “ _Please_ , Penny. I can’t do this without you.”

That makes him pause. Quentin watches as the disbelief and irritation slowly give way to something contemplative, eyebrows furrowing as he studies Quentin’s face. For what, he couldn’t possibly guess, and he feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin from stress as he waits. It feels like a small eternity before Penny’s internal deliberation reaches a conclusion and he finally nods. “Okay. Where to first?”

_Before you go to the Seam, you have to go to Fillory and get Fen and Josh. And Tick. And Rafe. Actually, just get everyone you can._

“From the future?” Fen asks, voice going up an octave at the end with incredulousness.

“Yeah, guys. That sounds a little…” Josh trails off, spreading his arms wide like he’s indicating the scope of their bullshit. 

They’re huddled together in a tight circle at the base of the dais despite the throne room being empty, so Quentin feels the way Penny tenses up beside him. For all of his skepticism at first, he seems to be fully on board now. His fingers tap a quick, impatient rhythm against his bicep from where his arms are crossed over his chest and he looks like he’s a second away from throttling both of them. 

They don’t seem to notice. 

“I know this all sounds ridiculous and impossible,” Quentin says in a rush, “but you’re going to have to trust me. All Eliot said was that something goes wrong in Fillory, so we needed to get both of you to Earth. And Tick and Rafe and uh – well, he said as many people as possible, but we don’t really have enough time for a full-scale evacuation, so –”

“So you have ten minutes to grab the people you can’t live without,” Penny finishes, “or we will leave all of your asses here.”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Quentin adds placatingly before either of them can interject. “Maybe you’ll just end up spending a couple of hours on Earth for no reason, but better safe than sorry, right?”

“Margo’s on board with this?” Josh asks, looking doubtfully between the two of them.

“Sure,” Quentin says, very deliberately not looking at Penny. 

Neither of them seems to believe a word they’ve been told, but they take off nonetheless, so Quentin counts it as a win. 

“Ten minutes,” Penny calls out after them, sinking down onto the edge of the dais and running a hand over his face as soon as they’re out of sight. 

Quentin sits down beside him and lets a minute or so pass in silence before he says, “Hey, so. Why do you believe me?”

“Who says I believe you?” 

“You believe me. I can tell.”

Penny hesitates, hunching his shoulders and running his thumb over the traveling tattoos on the back of his fingers. “A couple of weeks ago, I talked to the other Penny. Your Penny.” Quentin makes a questioning noise, but he waves him off. “It’s a long story, but he said that there was going to be this moment and when it came, I had to ‘do what he says.’ I think… I think maybe he was talking about you.”

“Wow,” Quentin says, trying to wrap his head around that. Their Penny warning this Penny who traveled from another timeline to trust the time traveling letter. It’s a lot to process. Still, he feels a spark of hope. “So maybe this does all work out.”

“Or maybe it’s not supposed to and he’s trying to make sure it doesn’t. He’s kind of a dick.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, huffing out a surprised laugh. “He was.” He pauses, adds, “It’s weird, but I kind of miss him sometimes.”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth he regrets them, but Penny just shrugs, looking unbothered. “It’s not that weird. I was standing in front of Julia ten minutes ago and I still miss her. It’s Julia, but it’s also not Julia. Just like I’m Penny, but I’m also not.”

Not for the first time, Quentin catalogues the differences between their Penny and Penny 23. On the surface, they’re the same. All sarcasm and snark and eye rolls, but the more time he spends with Penny 23, the more he feels like they’re two different people entirely. In a way, they are. Their Penny was in the timeline that won. This Penny watched everyone he cared about die bloody only to travel to another timeline and join a group of strangers wearing his friends faces. 

“Honestly, you’re a lot easier to deal with than our Penny,” he says honestly, even if he does feel guilty about it. They weren’t friends, but the guy did save all their lives more than a few times. He sends out a quick _sorry!_ in his head just in case their Penny is listening in, and he can almost see the eye roll in response. 

His comment serves its purpose of easing some of the tension. Penny snorts out a laugh and leans back on his elbow. “Yeah, well. I had to put up with you in my timeline for Julia, so I guess I’m still conditioned to be nice to you.”

“Well. Thank you, Julia 23.”

They descend into silence for the next few minutes until the doors open and Josh and Fen walk through, a dozen or so people trailing behind them. He recognizes Tick and Rafe and a few others, but most of them he’s never met. For all he’s loved Fillory for most of his life, he was kind of a shitty king. 

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Penny says, though whether that’s at the number of people or the sloth Rafe is carrying, Quentin isn’t sure. 

“Can you travel with this many people?” 

“We’re about to find out.” Penny stands up, flexing his hands at his side. “Back to the cottage?”

Quentin shakes his head, says, “The apartment.” He pats at his pocket as he stands to make sure the letter hasn’t disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. The corner of it digs into his side and he blows out a sigh of relief. “We need to make one more stop after we drop them off before we head back to the cottage.”

“Where to?”

“Uh – Walmart, I think. That should work.”

Penny shoots him an incredulous look. “Dude. Seriously?”

_Q, I need you to pay close attention to this next part. If you believe nothing else in this letter, believe this. Everett is going to try and stop you at the Seam._

He expected to be read the riot act when they got back to the cottage for taking Penny and disappearing for half an hour without telling anyone where they were going, but Julia apparently took care of it.

“I told them you guys were double checking that everything was in place.” Julia gives him a worried look. “Q, whatever is going on – I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

He smiles weakly. “Me too.”

Alice is less than pleased when he informs her he’ll be joining her and Penny at the Seam, but he doesn’t back down. He’d already wanted to go with them even before the letter – the only thing holding him back was wanting to make sure Eliot was okay after they pulled the Monster from his body. Now he knows he has to go. For the first time in a long time, he feels a dangerous spark of hope. If Eliot is alive in the future to write the letter, then everything must work out. Even if five more problems pop up, at least Eliot will be okay. 

“I have to do this,” he tells her. “I need to see this through.”

By some miracle, they manage to get the Monster out of Eliot’s body and no one dies in the process. His heart falls to approximately the forest floor at the sound Eliot makes when the axe pierces his skin and drops even further at the amount of blood that immediately starts gushing from the wound. He buries the fear and the panic and the need to drop down beside Eliot on the forest floor and focuses all his energy on casting. 

Everything happens quickly after that. Within just a handful of minutes they’ve gotten Alice and traveled to the lab, where Penny immediately slices his palm and starts painting the sigil onto the mirror. Quentin tries not to think about Eliot or the glass bottle in his hand as he waits for Penny to put on the finishing touches. 

Neither he nor Penny take any time to look around the strange, washed out world they’ve stepped into, both well aware of the time crunch they’re on. They rush Alice down the hallway and through the door of this world’s version of the lab as quickly as they can. She hesitates in the doorway until Penny strides across the room and rips the sheet off the mirror, curiosity finally pulling her in. She’s too engrossed in the Seam to notice Penny walking back across the room and positioning himself behind the open door.

He tosses his bottle in with no fanfare and immediately reaches for Alice’s. It’s then that he notices movement out of the corner of his eye. All traces of lingering doubt over the letter fades as Everett walks into the room, features blurring and rearranging from the power currently coursing through his body. 

Before Everett can get a word out, Penny springs out from behind the door and jams the stun gun into the back of his neck. There’s a split second after he discharges that Everett just stands there, but before Quentin can panic, he falls to his knees. Penny doesn’t let up on the button, not even when Everett collapses onto the floor.

Quentin turns away from the sight of Everett’s body flopping like a fish out of water and tosses the second bottle into the Seam. 

“Uh, how much longer should I do this?” Penny shouts over the crackling of the stun gun. He’s angled as far away from Everett’s body as he can while still keeping contact, but sparks are flying all over the place. Quentin can see the burns on his arm as he makes his way past a gaping Alice and across the room. 

The smell of burning flesh hits Quentin as soon as he’s within five feet of them and he almost gags. He knows without a doubt that anyone else would be dead by now, but Everett is so juiced up on magic currently that Quentin has no idea how much he can withstand before he dies. If he dies, even. 

“I don’t–”

“Coldwater!”

“Okay, okay,” Quentin says, resisting the urge to cover his nose as the smell worsens. “Just – we need to get him into the mirror as quickly as possible.”

“Okay, on three, alright? One, two, three!”

Penny drops the stun gun and they spring into action. Penny grabs his arms while Quentin grabs his legs and together they pull him across the floor as quickly as they can. Everett’s features are still blurring and rearranging, but he doesn’t appear to be regaining consciousness. Quentin isn’t eager to test that theory though and apparently neither is Penny because once they reach the mirror, they waste no time in hoisting Everett to his feet and pushing him into the Seam. As soon as he’s through, Penny pulls his arm back and punches the glass as hard as he can, sending a spider web of cracking through the mirror and closing the Seam. 

There’s a second of stunned silence as they all stare at their own reflections in the broken glass before Penny sinks to the floor, landing on his ass and sucking in a deep breath. “Oh my god,” he pants out, chest heaving. “For a second I thought that fucker wasn’t gonna go down and we were all gonna die.”

Relief hits Quentin like a punch to the gut and he sinks to the floor as well. Though “sink” maybe isn’t the right word. “Collapse” is probably better. He throws out his left arm to brace himself as soon as he feels his legs begin to give, but he still hits the floor hard. A sharp pain shoots up his arm, but he barely registers it.

“It fucking worked,” Quentin chokes out, voice thick with relief and shock and maybe tears. He can’t believe it actually fucking worked. 

“What the _fuck?_ ”

For all that years have been knocked off his life because of this, it really didn’t last that long. It’s been less than a minute since Everett walked into the room and Alice is still standing in the same place by the mirror, mouth open and eyes comically wide as she looks down at them.

“How did you–” She looks frantically between them and the spot on the floor where Everett’s body had dropped. “That was – tasers don’t _do_ that.”

“Even the shittiest little Walmart ones do when you rig it with enough magic,” Penny counters, glancing over at Quentin. They both immediately burst into peals of semi-hysterical laughter and sink even further down onto the floor. Only this time when Quentin braces his arm on the floor, the sensation registers and he lets out a pained gasp. 

It’s enough to sober up Penny and stop Alice’s frantic rambling. Penny is off the floor and they’re both on him in seconds, pulling him to his feet. “I’m fine,” Quentin says once he’s steady, but neither of them let him go. He cradles his arm to his chest. “Something’s definitely broken, but I’ll live.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” Penny says.

_I’m going to be honest with you, Q. There’s a lot going on in the world right now and this letter isn’t going to solve all of our problems, but I’m hoping it solves the most important ones. Since I’m being honest, I think I should be really honest. I know I said at the beginning of this that I would tell you everything in person, but I’m not going to risk it. Buckle up, Coldwater. Here goes._

His wrist is actually fractured, not broken, but it still throbs like a motherfucker as the harried looking healing student pokes and prods at it before finally declaring, “Everything is where it should be, so I’m going to stick a brace on you for now.” Her hands are gentle as she slides his wrist through, but he still misses the near instant relief of magic as the straps dig into his bones. “Come back when the ambient magic levels are higher and I’ll finish taking care of this.”

The waiting room in the Infirmary is smaller than in a typical hospital, but it’s nearly indistinguishable from any other waiting room otherwise. Beige walls, chairs that hurt your ass no matter how much you shift and a general air of misery and dread. Everyone is scattered around – Julia and Kady are seated to the left of the door, talking quietly with their heads bent close together. Penny is on the other side of the room, Alice across from him, and Margo is in the back corner in front of a window. She isn’t crying anymore, but she’s curled up tightly in the chair and her face is closed off in a way that Quentin knows means she wants to be alone, so he crosses the room to Penny instead. 

His eyes immediately go to Alice as he sits down, but she isn’t looking at him. As soon as they stepped out of the mirror, she’d thrown her arms around him. He’d hugged her just as tightly, but when she pulled back and tried to kiss him, he’d turned his head away. “We need to get to the Infirmary,” he’d said, but she didn’t look like she believed him and they hadn’t had the chance to talk yet. Both the burns on Penny’s arm and the cuts on his knuckles were minor, so the healing student had cleaned and bandaged him up relatively quickly and sent him on his way. Quentin’s wrist was a different story. Alice offered to stay with him, but he told her he’d rather her wait for an update from Lipson about Eliot. It was a flimsy excuse, but she’d gone with Penny to the waiting room nonetheless.

“Any news yet?” Quentin asks, tearing his eyes away from Alice.

Penny shakes his head.

He slides down a few inches in the chair and settles in for the long haul. He tries to sleep, the adrenaline of the last few hours finally beginning to disappear and leaving exhaustion in its wake, but the chair is uncomfortable and his mind is racing, so he gives up on that idea quickly. He pulls out his phone and messes around for awhile, but he can barely focus so he shoves it back into his pocket and takes to staring at the wall instead. He desperately wants to pull out the letter and reread it, but he doesn’t want anyone to see and start asking questions. At some point, he’s going to need to tell everyone, but he’s not ready quite yet. He slides his hand into his pocket and runs his fingers along the edge of the envelope instead, reminding himself that Eliot is going to be okay. 

Movement catches his eyes and he glances up to see Alice standing and stretching before she moves across the room to look out the window opposite of Margo. He should follow her, make sure she’s okay after everything that happened today but it’s just – awkward. Like it was right after they first met when all he wanted to do was talk to her and have her like him but he had no idea what to say. Now he knows exactly what he needs to say but he doesn’t know how. Things have been so messy between them lately. They always have been, really – all the way back to that moment years ago when he showed her the symbol on the palm of his hand. 

There’s so much bad between them and it was finally, finally starting to get better. Now he’s going to have to blow up the small progress they’ve made. _Later,_ he tells himself. Instead, he turns to Penny and says, hushed, “I think I died.” 

Penny looks asleep, slumped low with his head resting on the back of the chair, but that has him cracking his eyes open and turning to Quentin with a frown. “What?”

“The letter.” No one is paying them any attention, but he keeps his voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “Eliot didn’t say as much, but the way he was talking – I think I died stopping Everett the first time.”

Penny sits up fully then, glancing around the room. “Yeah,” he says just as quietly. “I kinda got that vibe too.”

“Do you think–” He cuts himself off, trying to gather his thoughts. Everything happened so quickly that he’s hardly had time to think since he got the letter. “Do you think that El sending the letter created another timeline? Timeline 41, I guess?”

“Shit, man,” Penny says, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

It’s a troubling thought, considering none of the other timelines stopped after Jane Chatwin reset them. Penny 23 sitting beside him right now is proof enough of that. Maybe the only thing the Eliot who wrote that letter succeeded in doing was to change the future of a timeline he’s no longer in.

It makes Quentin vaguely nauseous to think about, so he tells himself not to. If he starts worrying about what happened to everyone in every other timeline they lived after it was reset he doesn’t think he’ll be able to function and his grip on his mental health is already precarious at best. Still, he can’t help but worry that if the letter did create a new timeline, maybe his Eliot doesn’t fare as well as the other one. 

“Coldwater.” 

He’s pulled from his rapidly spiraling thoughts and looks up to see Margo stalking toward him, phone gripped tight in her hand. She looks _furious_ and Quentin’s stomach drops. He’s seen her mad and he’s seen her upset, but this is more. Both her expression and her voice are calm, but her eyes are alight with rage. 

“Not good,” Penny says under his breath.

“Do you want to explain to the class why I just got a text from Josh asking about some magical letter from future Eliot?”

That gets everyone’s attention. Kady and Julia both pause their conversation and look up, frowning. “Wait, what?” Kady asks, beginning to rise from her seat.

Before he can reply, Alice says, “Oh, my god. That’s how you knew” and everyone turns to look at her. She shifts on her feet and crosses her arms over her chest under the weight of the attention, but she doesn’t back down. “I’ve been going through what happened in my head over and over and I just – it seemed like you and Penny knew Everett was going to show up and I couldn’t figure out how.”

He can see both Kady and Julia approaching them, but he turns his attention to Margo instead. He stands slowly, sensing more than seeing Penny doing the same, and he raises his hands up in front of himself. “Margo, I was going to tell you,” he says, voice pleading. “I swear, I was going to tell all of you.”

“Start. Talking,” she grits out.

“Okay, so–” He blows out a breath, tries to figure out where to begin. “Basically, there’s this stamp from Fillory and it’s – well it–” 

“It lets you send a letter to anyone anywhere anytime,” Penny cuts in. “And Quentin got one earlier today from Eliot, from the future.”

There’s a second of dead silence before everyone starts talking at the same time, questions and accusations and objections, overlapping and blurring together until the noise and the stress of the day finally catches up to Quentin and he snaps. “Shut up!” he shouts. “Just shut up and I’ll explain.”

Miraculously, they do. Kady looks like she’s about to protest, but Julia puts a hand on the crook of her elbow and shakes her head. Even Margo remains silent, though she looks like she’s about to rip his face off.

“Thank you.” He sees Alice start to make her way to their huddled group, so he waits for her to step up beside Margo before he continues. “Right after we came up with the plan, I went upstairs to the bathroom and it just appeared.” He pulls the now slightly wrinkled envelope from his pocket and holds it up so they can all see the writing on the front. “Eliot didn’t go into specifics, but he said that he was writing from the future. He said that our planned work, but before we tossed the Monsters into the Seam I had to do a couple of things.”

Kady scoffs, says, “That sounds ridiculous” at the same time Margo says, stunned, “That’s El’s handwriting.”

Quentin ignores them and continues. “The first thing he wanted me to do was go to Fillory and get Josh and Fen. Apparently, something happens there and he wanted them on Earth when it does, so I told Penny about the letter and we went to Fillory. Both of them and about a dozen other Fillorians are at the apartment right now.”

“What happens in Fillory?” Julia asks, looking more intrigued than varying degrees of angry and incredulous like everyone else. 

“I don’t know.” It’s not like he hasn’t asked himself that same question, but so much has happened in the last few hours that he hadn’t had time to really worry about Fillory yet. One disaster at a time. “He was a little light on the details. 

“He told you about Everett,” Alice says. It isn’t a question. She’s doing her best to hide it, but he still knows her well enough to see how hurt she is about being kept in the dark. “That he was going to be there.”

“Yeah, and try to fuck everything up,” Penny says. “So, Eliot said we needed to get something to stop him.”

“And you got a _taser_?” she asks, eyebrows shooting up from behind the frame of her glasses. 

“Yeah, well.” Penny shrugs. “We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to think of anything better. We amped it up with magic as much as we could.”

“And brought it to a world where using magic backfires in a spectacular way?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Penny asks, beginning to look irritated. “Look, we didn’t tell you because we thought the less people that knew, the better.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Kady interjects. “That’s not something you keep quiet.”

“Let me see it,” Margo says, reaching for the letter. He pulls it out of her reach, and she gives him a warning look. “Quentin. Now.”

“No,” he says firmly, shoving it back into his pocket just in case she tries to make a grab for it again. “I told you the most important parts.”

“Then why can’t we read it, exactly?” Kady asks, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“Because there are other – things–” He resists the urge to wince, feeling like he has a neon sign on his face projecting exactly what those things are in screaming color to the entire room. He very carefully does not look at Alice. “Things that have to do with me that don’t – concern any of you.”

“Or you’re hiding something,” Kady accuses, and this time she shrugs out from under the hand Julia puts on her. “No, Jules. He’s lost the right of having us just blindly trust him.”

“Seriously?” Penny asks, shooting her a look. “We were trying to save everyone’s asses.”

“Yeah, 23,” she says with a sneer. “Seriously. He went behind our backs and we barely know you, so how do you expect us to–”

“Because all I’ve done since I got here is try to help?” he says incredulously. “I’m sorry I’m not _your_ Penny, but–”

“Jesus, I _died_ , okay?” Quentin snaps before things can escalate any further.

That shuts everyone up.

“Q, what?” Julia asks, taking an aborted step forward like she wants to reach out and make sure he’s really there. 

“I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure I died trying to stop Everett the first time.” Even as he watches the shock and horror play out on their faces at the thought of his death despite their anger, he can’t muster up the urge to care about it himself. What’s one more death in another timeline he can’t remember? “I think Eliot sent me that letter to prevent it from happening again.”

“So, what?” Margo asks, shoulders slumping. It makes her look exhausted and oddly small. “We have to deal with more time travel bullshit on top of everything else? Are we in a different timeline now?”

He’s saved from having that conversation again by the sound of someone clearing their throat. Lipson is standing in the doorway looking tired, but pleased. “Eliot’s going to be fine,” she says, and Quentin’s knees threaten to buckle right there. “There was some bleeding, but nothing I couldn’t handle. When the ambient levels rise, I’ll finish healing him.”

“Is he awake?” Margo asks, voice breaking as she takes an unsteady step forward. “Can I see him?”

“He’s going to be unconscious for a while, but you can sit with him.”

The words have barely left Lipson’s mouth before Margo takes off and Quentin doesn’t try to follow, just gives into his body’s demands and sinks into his chair with relief. 

_Do you remember when I got sick with that awful Fillorian bug? Most of it’s a blur for me, but I do remember you taking care of me. I remember you didn’t touch the mosaic for over a week because by then it had stopped being the most important thing in our lives. I remember Teddy crawling into bed with me one afternoon and telling me stories so I would feel better. When you came inside a while later, I thought you were going to make him leave so I wouldn’t get him sick, but instead you crawled into bed too. It was the sickest I’d ever been in my entire life, but with you by my side and our son tucked in between us, it was also the happiest I’d ever been. The most content. That was the moment I realized you were my home._

Eliot regains consciousness just before midnight. 

Shortly after Lipson told them Eliot was going to be okay, everyone took off. The conversation they’d been having was long from over, but everyone was tired and needed time to decompress. Quentin had taken a few moments to calm himself down and allow Margo her privacy before he joined her in Eliot’s private room. She’d been sitting in a chair by his bed, hand curled around his and tear tracks on her cheeks. She hadn’t said anything when he came in and neither had he, but she watched him thoughtfully as he pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the bed and grabbed Eliot’s other hand. 

Now, Margo is wrapped up in a scratchy hospital blanket and curled up asleep in the chair, neck at an uncomfortable looking angle. He’s leaning against the side of the mattress, head resting beside Eliot’s arm, and he’s been floating somewhere between awake and asleep for some indiscernible amount of time when he feels something touch his hair. 

When he lifts his head, he sees Eliot looking back at him, eyes bleary but decidedly open and alive and entirely his own. “Hey, Q,” he says, voice rough.

Hearing Eliot’s voice, rough with disuse but lacking the strange inflection of the Monster’s speech has Quentin immediately choking back tears. He has to swallow against the lump in his throat several times before he can manage, “Hey, El.”

“Your _hair_ ,” Eliot says, reaching a weak, shaking hand up to tug at the shortest lock of hair framing Quentin’s face. 

Quentin huffs out something between a laugh and a sob. “ _Your_ hair,” he says, tugging at one of the long curls by his chin. 

Eliot wraps his fingers around Quentin’s wrist and holds his hand in place, so Quentin takes it as permission to cup his cheek, run his thumb under the dark circles under Eliot’s eyes. Eliot turns into the gesture, eyelids fluttering closed.

Quentin is just beginning to wonder if he’s fallen back asleep when his eyes crack open, just a sliver of iris visible. “What happened?” he mumbles. “Is everyone okay?”

The lump in Quentin’s throat rises again, but this time it’s impossible to swallow down. A strangled noise rips from his throat before he can stop it and the tears he’s been fighting off start falling. He hurriedly raises the arm Eliot doesn’t have captive and presses his face into his forearm to stave off the flow because _Jesus, not the time, Coldwater_. The scratchy edge of the brace rubs into his skin and he focuses on the sensation instead of the swell of emotion in his chest.

He hears Eliot make a hurt, worried noise and feels him adjust his fingers so instead of clutching Quentin’s wrist, they’re holding hands against Eliot’s chest. “Hey, Q. It’s okay.”

“Yeah, it is okay,” he chokes out. He allows himself one more second of hiding before he wipes at his face and drops his arm. He manages a wobbly, but hopefully reassuring smile. “You’re okay. A lot happened but – we’re all okay.”

“Q, I–”

“El?” 

They both look over to see Margo beginning to sit up in her chair, blanket falling from her shoulders as she unfolds from her contorted position. Her movements are stiff, but she’s beaming as her eyes roam over Eliot’s body. 

“Hey, Bambi.”

“I’ll give you two a moment,” Quentin says, moving to get up as Margo sits on the edge of the mattress.

Eliot makes an unhappy noise, turning his attention back to Quentin. 

And Quentin – well. After months of constant worry and grief and terror, relief has apparently struck him dumb because he doesn’t think twice about raising their still connected hands and pressing a kiss to the back of Eliot’s fingers. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?” He keeps his gaze firmly on Eliot, but he can feel the weight of Margo’s eyes on him. “We’ll talk then.”

Quentin gently detangles their fingers and leaves them to their reunion. The Infirmary is mostly deserted this time of night, so he doesn’t run into anyone as he walks far enough down the hallway to allow them their privacy. He sinks down right there on the floor against the wall and pulls out his phone to send a text to the group chat letting everyone know Eliot is awake.

He gets a few general replies of acknowledgement and he’s about to slide his phone back into his pocket when Penny sends him a text through their private thread. _You talk to him about the letter?_

 _Not yet_ , Quentin replies. _When he’s feeling better._

He knows he has to tell him, especially now that everyone else knows, but the thought fills him with dread. Eliot had poured his heart into that letter, but Quentin’s not so sure that Eliot exists anymore. That Eliot had clearly been overwhelmed and desperate and hurting. Grieving, if Quentin’s theory is correct. How much of that letter was born from genuine feelings and how much from extenuating circumstances?

Quentin knows how Eliot reacts when he feels like he’s getting backed into a corner. When things get too real. He can still hear the words “don’t be naive” and “I love you, but–” as clear in his head today as when they were spoken to him over a year ago. Having a future version of himself expose his deepest feelings and regrets like that isn’t likely to go over well. 

Having Eliot reject him the first time was painful enough. He doesn’t think he could handle Eliot pushing him away again after reading everything in that letter.

He’s so lost in his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice Margo walking down the hall toward him until she’s right there, kicking at his foot to get his attention. Her eyes are red and a little swollen, but her cheeks are dry. She looks more like herself than she has in months – back straight, shoulders back and head held high as she looks down at him.

“I’m in desperate need of a shower,” she says, holding a hand out to him. He takes it, lets her hoist him off the ground. “I’ll be back in an hour.” But he hears what she’s really saying: _thank you_ and _your turn_ and possibly even _I forgive you_. 

She’s got this look on her face that makes him feel uncomfortably _seen_ , so he hurries back to Eliot’s room before she can start asking questions he doesn’t want to answer. 

Eliot is propped up on a small mountain of pillows, looking decidedly more alert than he was earlier. His face lights up when he spots Quentin in the doorway, the skin by his eyes crinkling up like it always does when he genuinely smiles. It makes Quentin’s heart speed up exponentially, bringing back a lifetime’s worth of memories of placing his thumb over those wrinkles, watching as they grew deeper with age and frequency of use.

Eliot quirks an eyebrow at him. “Are you coming in?”

Which makes Quentin realize he’s just standing in the entrance of the room, staring. He huffs out an embarrassed laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck as he makes his way over to his abandoned chair and sits down. Before Eliot can start teasing him, he asks, “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, you know,” Eliot says lightly. “Like I got stabbed after a prehistoric monster with no sense of self-preservation or grooming skills rode my body around for months.”

Quentin resists the urge to flinch. The thought of joking about everything that’s happened makes him vaguely nauseous, but he knows this is how Eliot copes with trauma – all sarcasm and flippancy and banter. If it’s what Eliot needs to feel normal, to feel more like himself, Quentin will play along. “Did Margo tell you about his affinity for graphic t-shirts?”

“Unfortunately.” Eliot gives an exaggerated, full body shudder. “I guess visiting tacky mall kiosks took priority over a haircut. Or, you know. Regularly showering.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, smiling weakly. “He was kind of a dick.”

It’s apparently the wrong thing to say because Eliot’s whole face kind of – shudders, his smile falling and some of the light in his eyes fading. “Did he hurt you?’ he asks quietly, all traces of humor from his voice long gone.

Quentin makes an aborted reach for him, only stopping at the last second to curl his fingers around the edge of the mattress instead. Without the casual facade, Eliot looks exhausted and unsteady and distraught, and Quentin’s not sure his touch will be welcomed. With as much conviction as possible, he says, “No, he didn’t.”

Eliot’s eyes drop down to look at Quentin’s hands on the mattress. At the wrist brace, he realizes.

“El, this–” Quentin holds up his injured wrist. “The Monster didn’t do this, I promise. After it was all over, I was so relieved I– well. I fell on my ass, basically, and landed on my wrist wrong. It’s just a tiny fracture.”

He still looks doubtful, so Quentin decides to be brave. He moves from the chair to the edge of the mattress, settling gently on the edge so he doesn’t jostle Eliot too much. He places his uninjured hand palm side up right beside Eliot’s, an open invitation that is immediately accepted. “How much do you remember?” Quentin asks and starts rubbing little circles onto the back of Eliot’s hand with his thumb. 

“I wasn’t aware of what was going on outside of my body.” He’s looking down at their clasped hands when he says it and Quentin is grateful because he can’t control the look of utter relief that breaks out on his face. “I didn’t even realize I was being possessed at first. I was in this corner of my mind – the Happy Place, it’s called – but even after I realized, I still had no idea what was going on.”

 _Thank fucking god for that_ , Quentin thinks. He has so many questions, but for now he’s just grateful Eliot was tucked away in a safe part of his mind while the Monster controlled his body. “Well, the Monster–” He thinks back to their short-lived time at Blackspire, to Ora and her summary of him. “He was like a child. He needed attention and reassurance and as long as he got that, he was fine. And he liked me, for some reason.” He can’t help but laugh a little at that because it sounds absurd, even if it’s true. “He thought we were friends, Eliot. He didn’t hurt me.” It’s barely even a lie – a broken arm and some bruising is nothing compared to the violence and carnage the Monster was capable of doling out.

Eliot exhales shakily, says, “Okay. I’m glad.”

It’s abundantly clear that Eliot isn’t ready to hear about the letter. He needs time to recover, both physically and mentally, before he gets that bomb dropped on his lap. Quentin is going to tell him, really, but not right now. Not yet. 

_I love you, Q. No hesitations, no buts. I just love you, full stop. The biggest regret of my life – and there’s so many, a whole chalkboard’s worth – is that I didn’t tell you sooner._

Eliot is allowed to leave the Infirmary after Lipson heals him the following morning under the condition that he takes it easy for a few days, so Margo helps him out of the hospital gown and into his own clothes while Quentin finds the healing student from yesterday. With a few jerky hand movements, the pain bleeds out of his wrist completely, but she tells him to wear the brace for a few more days anyway. By the time he gets back to the room, they’re ready to leave. 

Eliot takes in the apartment with interest and faint approval, but the journey from Brakebills has left him exhausted and a little shaky on his feet, so they skip the grand tour and herd him into one of the empty bedrooms on the first floor. He complains that he’s fine the whole time because he’s Eliot, but he sighs deeply as he sinks into the mattress. 

Margo had wholeheartedly agreed that they shouldn’t tell him about the letter yet, so she’d coordinated with Josh and gotten all the Fillorians out of the apartment before they arrived. Where they are now, Quentin has no idea, but he’s relieved nonetheless. They’ve yet to run into anyone else, so for now it’s just the three of them and it’s strangely quiet as he and Margo get him settled.

Eliot watches them with amusement as they float around the room, adjusting the shades on the window and fluffing his pillows and smoothing his blankets. Margo disappears and reappears a minute later with one of those mineral waters they always used to have in the refrigerator at the cottage and forces him to drink half of it before she screws the cap back on and places it on the nightstand.

She surveys the room for a moment, hands on her hips, before declaring, “Well, I’m starving.”

“I can cook breakfast.” Quentin does a quick inventory of what’s in the kitchen in his head before amending, “I can go get breakfast.”

An argument ensues as Eliot and Margo throw out suggestions for restaurants, all of which Quentin has never heard of. Considering the last thing he ate was that weird god cake yesterday, he’d eat McDonalds at this point. Just to see the looks on their faces, he throws out the suggestion, and the unbridled horror he gets in response makes the ten minute tangent about his unrefined palate worth it. 

It reminds him of his early days at Brakebills. Before Alice, before the Beast, before Fillory. Just the three of them. He’d been an overwhelmed, blatantly nerdy disaster but they’d adopted him anyway. He didn’t have a lot of friends growing up – he didn’t have any friends, really, except for Julia. He floated in her social circle throughout middle school and high school and college, all the while knowing that if it wasn’t for her, none of those people would talk to him. Until Brakebills, until Margo and Eliot, he’d never had friends outside of her. He has no idea what he did to catch their attention, but he’s eternally grateful he did.

While he was busy taking a trip down memory lane, they’d apparently decided on a restaurant. Eliot’s choice, but only because “you _did_ almost die.” It goes without saying that he’ll be staying with Eliot, so without a word Margo turns and disappears from the bedroom. A few seconds later, he hears the front door close.

“She didn’t even ask what I wanted.”

Eliot laughs. “When does she ever?”

He seems better today. Quentin’s not naive enough to think he’s _okay,_ but he looks less like one wrong word is going to make him fall apart. They’d talked a little last night about everything that’s happened since he was possessed – the regulation of magic, Everett, Kady stepping up with the hedge community, Josh turning into a fish, his dad dying, Julia becoming human again, the egg incident. The last one had made Eliot laugh for ages and Quentin had been too happy seeing him happy to be embarrassed. He deliberately didn’t ask any questions about what the Monster got up to in his body besides rebuilding his sister and Quentin deliberately didn’t offer. It’s not like Quentin can keep it from him forever, but for now he just wants Eliot to focus on recovering before he dives headfirst into the black. 

“Come sit with me, Q,” Eliot says, patting the empty spot next to him. 

Quentin walks around to the other side of the bed and settles down on top of the covers, leaving a foot or so of space between them. It’s hardly the first time they’ve shared a bed, but it feels – wrong, for Quentin to get too close, to be too intimate, when he knows things about Eliot that Eliot doesn’t know he knows. Presumptuous. 

“Where are you right now?” Eliot asks, pulling Quentin from his thoughts. At his confused look, Eliot gestures to his head. “One minute you’re here, the next you’re staring off into space. It’s happened a couple of times.” 

“Oh.” He hadn’t been aware Eliot noticed, but he should have realized. Eliot knows him better than any person on the planet. On any planet. Even better than himself, sometimes. He takes a moment, tries to put words to the chaos in his head. “It’s like I’ve been in a constant state of fight or flight for – for as long as I can remember,” he says haltingly, staring down at his hands so he doesn’t have to look at Eliot. It’s not fair that he gets to keep his secrets while Quentin’s are written all over his face. “Maybe all the way back to when the Beast first came in through the mirror. And now there’s just – nothing.” _Yet,_ he thinks, chest tightening. “I just – I don’t know. I’m having a hard time believing it’s real.”

Eliot makes a low, soothing noise in his throat and extends his arm out. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Quentin says weakly. _In any way, ever._

But Eliot just rolls his eyes and gives him a pointed look until he bridges the gap between them and gingerly settles against Eliot’s side. One arm circles around his shoulder, pulling him closer, while the other reaches up to settle a hand on his side. It’s a position they’ve been in countless times before in their other lifetime, but not in this one, and it makes his eyes sting in warning. 

“How about,” Eliot murmurs, squeezing his side lightly, “we just sit here for a while, together, and not worry about anything. Yeah?” After Quentin hums his agreement, he adds, “Now, tell me more about Falcor.”

Quentin groans, but he does. He talks and talks and talks until Eliot falls asleep, snoring softly, and some indiscriminate time later, he does too. 

When he opens his eyes, he’s standing in that strange, washed out version of the lab in the mirror world. Only, it’s wrong. Penny is standing beside Alice instead of behind the door, and Everett is picking up something from the table in the middle of the room. He throws it at the mirror and the Seam closes as the glass shatters. And he knows what he has to do, so he tells Penny to take Alice from the room. It all happens so quickly after – he casts with one hand and throws with the other and sparks start flying everywhere. Then Penny, _his_ Penny, is standing in front of him and telling him he’s dead. He takes him to see their friends – to see his _funeral_ where they burn mementos because there’s nothing else left of him. It’s painful and strange and awful, but he’s so relieved to see they’re all okay. He starts crying the second he sees Eliot because they never got to say goodbye, they never even got to _talk_ to each other, but it doesn’t matter because he’s alive. It was all worth it as long as Eliot is alive. Turning away from them after that last look is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his entire life, but he takes comfort in knowing they’re going to be okay. _The story for them is just starting_. He’s standing on a platform then, and Penny is handing him a card and hugging him and finally – nothing. 

He jolts awake with a gasp.

There’s movement beside him and he’s suddenly being crushed against someone. 

It startles him, badly, as his sluggish brain tries to process where he’s at and what’s going on. He remembers – what does he remember? He was at the train station – no, that’s not right. He was at the apartment. Marina’s apartment that’s now Kady’s. He was in bed with Eliot at the apartment. They’d been talking and then they’d fallen asleep. They were in bed because Eliot isn’t possessed anymore, he’s–

Eliot is crying. 

Whatever fog had descended on his brain while he was asleep begins to clear.

Eliot has him hugged against his chest so tightly Quentin can barely breathe, one arm wrapped around his back and the other around his shoulders. From this close, he can feel the way Eliot’s chest is heaving and – crying might not be the right word. He’s seen Eliot cry. Tears of frustration at the mosaic, tears of happiness when Teddy was born, tears of grief when Arielle died, tears of laughter, tears of pleasure, tears of joy. A whole lifetime’s worth of tears. 

This is something else. 

It takes Quentin a second to realize that Eliot is speaking through those awful noises ripping their way from his chest. “It worked,” he’s saying, _sobbing_ , face pressed tight into the top of Quentin’s head. “It worked, it worked.” Over and over and over.

And – oh. He’s talking about the letter. The one he sent from the future. The future where– 

“I died.” He remembers the explosion – the bright flash of light, the sparks flying everywhere, the shock on Penny’s face and the horror on Alice’s – but it happened too quickly to feel any pain. A brief flash of heat on his back and then he was just _gone_. 

Eliot pulls back then, and he looks – devastated and relieved and heartbroken and happy, smiling so wide his eyes crinkle up even as tears roll down his cheeks and drip off his face. He brings his hands up to Quentin’s face, one pushing back a lock of his hair and the other stroking along his cheekbone. “No,” he says fiercely. “You didn’t.”

Quentin reaches up and grasps one of Eliot’s wrists, feels how rapidly his pulse is beating. “How long–” 

“A month.” Eliot brushes his thumb under Quentin’s eyes, brushes _away_ something, because he’s crying too apparently. “A little over a month.”

“Oh.”

Before he can really process that, the door to the bedroom is flying open and they both jump, breaking their hold on each other. Margo is standing there, her eyes huge and wet. “It worked.” She sounds out of breath, chest rising and falling rapidly like she’d run here. “Eliot, you – the letter. It fucking worked.”

Eliot chokes out a laugh, pulls Quentin back against him. “Yeah, Bambi. It fucking worked.”

She hurries across the room and crawls into bed with them, settling down on Quentin’s other side and pulling him into a tight hug. Eliot joins in a few seconds later and they all hold each other for a while, all limbs and tears and relief. 

_When I said you were naive for thinking that we would choose each other when we had any other choice, what I should have said was this: I was scared that you wouldn’t choose me. I was scared if we gave it a shot, you would realize you only loved me when there wasn’t anyone else around to love. I should have just been honest with you. You’re my first choice, even if I’m not yours. Always._

Apparently future Eliot hadn’t informed anyone he was sending the letter – which Margo spent a solid ten minutes yelling at him about – so they’d all been bombarded with a month’s worth of memories they’d never actually experienced with no explanation why. It had spawned a lot of confused phone calls and texts before they came to the consensus that what they were remembering really did happen, even if technically it didn’t. 

A month. He’d been dead for a month. He’d _died_. 

He’s having trouble wrapping his head around it. It’s not the first time he’s died technically, but those 39 other timelines weren’t _him_ , not really, and in the mosaic timeline he’d died in his sleep none the wiser shortly after Eliot. This is the first time he’s died and actually remembered it. He’d felt it, he’d seen the grief on his friends faces, he’d left the Underworld and walked into the unknown. 

It’s a lot to process, so mostly he’s trying not to focus on it. Which – considering the chaos of the last few hours, it’s not that hard to do. 

Penny had been the first to show up to the apartment and he’d pulled Quentin into a hug before anyone could get a word out. It involved much more back slapping than with their Penny, but still. Two hugs from two different Pennys. The shock was almost enough to kill him all over again.

Alice and Julia arrived one after the other, and they’d taken turns hugging him and crying into his shoulder and yelling at him. He’d held them and murmured his apologies, but nothing he said would ease the pain they’d felt from losing him, even as he’s standing right there with them. It’s still real to them even if it never actually happened, just like Arielle and Teddy and everyone he’d loved in that lifetime are real to him too. 

Kady had taken a little bit longer to arrive, but she’d sent him a simple _glad ur not dead_ text. He’d replied _Same_ and then added _Can’t believe you sang take on me at my funeral_ , to which she’d responded _¯\\_(_ _ツ_ _)_/¯_ but she’d hugged him just as tightly as everyone else did when she finally got to the apartment an hour later. 

Josh and Fen apparently had only found out a few days before Eliot sent the letter, but they seemed pleased nonetheless that he was no longer dead. 

One good thing came from all of it though – apparently getting slammed with a month’s worth of grief in less than a minute constitutes enough pain that the legitimacy of the source doesn’t matter. Julia had gotten her magic back. “Hey, Q,” she’d said with a watery smile, reaching for the deck of cards he’d left on the coffee table at some point. “You want to see a card trick?” And he’d been so fucking relieved she could have one without losing the other that he’d started crying too. 

They’re all gathered around the living room now, empty taco wrappers scattered around the coffee and end tables. They’re from that greasy hole in the wall that Margo swears makes her break out just looking at, but he’d gotten to choose the restaurant since she’d dropped their breakfast on the middle of the sidewalk when she’d been hit with the memories and also since he’d _died_.

“I still don’t understand how we remember,” Julia says. She’s sitting on the couch beside him and they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip to knee with their fingers intertwined. She keeps intermittently squeezing his hand, though whether she’s doing it unconsciously or to make sure he’s really there he isn’t sure. “We don’t remember any of the other timelines.”

He glances at Eliot, but Eliot is staring out the window, seemingly lost in thought. He’s been like that the last few hours, quiet and withdrawn and distracted. In the midst of all the chaos, no one else seems to have noticed. Quentin desperately wants to talk to him about everything, but they haven’t had a moment alone since Margo barged into the bedroom this morning. 

“Maybe this isn’t a new timeline then,” Kady offers. 

“I think she’s right,” Quentin says, tearing his eyes away from Eliot. “Jane Chatwin started from scratch each time with the time loops using powerful time magic. The letter Eliot sent – it’s not the same kind of magic. I could have not opened the letter or ignored what it told me to do. I had a choice in a way we never had with the time loops. I just – I don’t think it was enough to start an entirely new timeline.”

“But that doesn’t explain how we remember everything,” Julia says, unsatisfied with his vague answer. Not for the first time, he feels a surge of anger at Jane Chatwin and Dean Fogg for robbing her of Brakebills. He thinks with her endless curiosity and determination, she really would have discovered an entirely new kind of magic had the opportunity not been taken from her. “Why do we remember it when it never even happened?”

This time when Quentin looks at Eliot, he’s looking right back. _Why._ It’s a question he’s asked himself hundreds of times and he wonders if Eliot has too. Why do they remember the mosaic quest when they never went on it? Why can he still remember the way Arielle’s hair smelled when he never met her? Why can he remember the shape of the birthmark on Teddy’s foot when he never existed? Why does he remember a lifetime with Eliot when he’s only known him for a few years? He thinks from the pensive look on Eliot’s face, he maybe does too. 

“Does it matter?” Alice asks quietly. “We’re likely never going to have an answer. The important thing is Quentin is alive.”

“You’re right,” Julia says, squeezing his hand. “Q is alive and everything else – Fillory and the Dark King and the surges – we’ll figure those out."

The discussion turns to the magical surges after that and Quentin is relieved to no longer be the center of attention. He lets Julia’s voice wash over him as she explains what she and Penny had discovered in their research. Apparently, they hadn’t all been together since Quentin’s funeral, so he isn’t the only one not caught up. 

After a while, the conversation starts winding down. Julia is eager to pick back up on her research now that she has a time advantage and Penny is eager to be wherever she is, so they head to the Brakebills library. Kady leaves shortly after they do to talk to Pete and Fen wants to go out into the city, so Josh and Margo accompany her. Before he has time to panic about being left alone with Eliot and Alice, Eliot tells them he’s going to take a nap and disappears into his bedroom. 

It’s the first time he’s been alone with Alice since he’d forgiven her and told her he wanted to try again. It was – supremely unfair of him and he thinks he’s going to always hate himself for that and for what he has to do now. “Hey, so.” His voice sounds startlingly loud in the otherwise silent room. “We should – talk.”

They move upstairs to the room he’s been staying in for some semblance of privacy, but once the door is closed and it’s just the two of them, he doesn’t know how to start. For all their relationship was mostly a disaster, he really did love her. He thinks she’s probably the first person he ever truly fell in love with and the last thing he wants to do is hurt her. 

“Quentin, just do it.” She’s standing with her back against the door, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her chin is raised with defiance, but her voice wavers and her eyebrows are pulling in like they always do when she’s upset. Still, she’s looking him right in the eyes, ready for the truth even though she knows it’s going to hurt her. She’s always been one of the bravest people he knows, so he owes her the courtesy of at least being honest. 

“I’m in love with Eliot.”

She nods once – a harsh, jerky movement. “I know.”

That pulls him up short. “How–”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Come on, Quentin,” she says, huffing out a laugh. “I know you, remember? I don't know when or – or _how_ it happened, but I’d be an idiot not to see how in love you are with him.”

“I can tell you both of those things,” he offers. He’s never told anyone other than his dad about the mosaic, but if anyone deserves to know about it, it’s her. He sinks down onto the edge of the bed, gesturing to the spot beside him. “It’s well – it probably won’t make you feel any better, but I think it’ll help you to understand.”

She joins him after a brief hesitation, keeping a foot of space in between them. She smooths down her skirt a few times before she turns to him, clearing her throat. “Go ahead.”

“Do you remember me telling you about the mosaic in Fillory?” he asks. “How Eliot and I ended up spending our whole lives there trying to solve it?”

It’s clearly not what she was expecting – she quirks an eyebrow and cocks her head just slightly. “Yes, for the time key. But Margo ended up getting the key off Jane Chatwin’s body instead and stopping you two from ever going.”

He nods. “Well, the thing is – somehow, Eliot and I ended up remembering everything. All fifty years we spent there.”

He tells her about those first few years – how frustrated they were, how hopeless they felt, how many times they thought about giving up entirely. He tells her about how they started sleeping together after the first year and about how it fell apart because neither of them was willing to admit it was so much more than that. He tells her about meeting Arielle, falling in love with her, marrying her. He tells her about the birth of their son. He tells her about how one day when Teddy was three, she started coughing and less than a year later she was gone. He tells her about his grief and fear and despondency, how Eliot stepped up for Teddy during that dark time and never stepped back down. He tells her about he and Eliot reconnecting a few years later and finally admitting how they really felt about each other. He tells her about how they lived an entire lifetime together, full of love and joy and family. He tells her everything.

“It turns out,” he says, voice rough from overuse and emotion, “the beauty of all life is living it.”

“My god,” she says quietly. It’s the first time she’s spoken since he started the story, remaining quiet even when he’d had to take long pauses to remember a certain detail or blink back tears. She’d been completely patient, looking more and more fascinated and awed the more he told her. “Quentin, that’s – I can hardly believe it.”

“Yeah, it was–” He presses his fingers into his eyes to stave off the tears he can feel welling up. It had been painful to talk about, but also strangely cathartic. He only told his dad the bare minimum, so this is the first time he’s really gotten to talk about everything. “It really was a beautiful life.”

They sit in silence for a long time before she finally speaks. “I’m glad I know now,” she says, but her eyes are starting to fill with tears. “It doesn’t hurt any less, but I do understand.”

“I’m so sorry, Alice.” He reaches for her hand and she allows him to intertwine their fingers. “I wasn’t lying when I said I want you in my life, but it was unbelievably selfish of me to ask you to try again when I feel the way I do about Eliot. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking, really. These last months have been just – the worst of my life and I wanted to feel like that person I was when I came to Brakebills again. The person I was when I was with you.”

She pulls her hand free of his and for the first time, he sees a flash of anger on her face. It feels – not good, exactly, but right. It’s what he’d been expecting, and he knows it’s what he deserves. “That’s not how it works, Quentin,” she snaps. “Neither of us have been those people in a long time. Not since I was a Niffin and not since you – you had this epic love story you told no one about.”

“I wasn’t trying to lie to you, but–” 

She huffs out a harsh laugh. 

“It was painful, okay? Thinking about Arielle, about Teddy. You have to understand – after a while it stopped being about the quest. Eliot and I, we even – well. We agreed that when we solved the mosaic, we were staying in Fillory.” He remembers that conversation so clearly. It was a couple of years after Arielle died and Quentin had been thinking about it for a long time, but it was Eliot who was brave enough to broach the topic first. They had been working late into the night on a design when Teddy had come out of the cottage, his face flushed and lined from sleep. He’d gone straight to Eliot where he sat on the mosaic and crawled into his lap without a word, falling back asleep within seconds. Eliot had looked down at him for a long time before he’d finally told Quentin, haltingly, that he didn’t want to leave. And so they agreed they never would, as long as they had a choice in the matter. “We’d make sure to get the key to you all somehow, but we weren’t going back. Our whole _life_ was there. And then Margo did what she did. I don’t blame her but – suddenly that beautiful life we’d lived was gone. It wasn’t even real. And I wanted to talk about it so badly, but the one person I needed to talk to didn’t want to listen. Eliot wasn’t – he didn’t want to think about what happened, so I tried to put it behind me.” 

He watches as the anger slowly begins to bleed from her features and exhaustion takes over, her head bowing and her shoulders slumping. “But you can’t.”

“I really do love you, Alice,” he says, voice cracking. “But Eliot is my home.”

She nods. “I understand,” she says quietly, rising from the bed. She smooths the wrinkles from her skirt and adjusts her glasses. “Zelda is going to ask me to run the Library soon and I’m going to accept her offer. I was too busy grieving before but now – well.”

“You’ll be amazing at it,” he says truthfully. For all she’s always been terrified of what she’s capable of, he can’t think of anyone better for the position. 

“I’m glad you’re okay, Quentin,” she says, giving him a weak smile. “I’m really mad at you, but I’m still so grateful Eliot sent that letter. And I’m going to forgive you for everything, just – not right now.”

“I understand.”

She leaves then, closing the door quietly behind her, but he stays in the same spot for a long, long time.

_Peaches and plums, Q._

He has to give it to Marina. She may be a spectacularly terrible person, but she’s got taste.

Quentin has spent enough time in the city that its charm has mostly worn off for him, but he can’t deny the view from the apartment’s balcony is breathtaking. The sun set a couple of hours ago, but Manhattan is just as alive and loud and bright as it always is. He feels a strange sense of disconnect from it all the way up here – like he exists in a different world than the woman getting into the cab or the man walking his dog. In a way, he does. Most of these people have no idea how little they actually know about the world and likely never will.

The thought makes him somber, so he curls up a little tighter in his chair and takes a long drag from the cigarette between his fingers. He’d prefer if it was weed, but Josh still hasn’t returned from his excursion with Margo and Fen and the pack had been sitting out on the glass table in front of him, so he made do. He brings his fingers to his lips and casts Weizenheim’s Third. When he exhales the smoke, it forms a boat, and he watches as it slowly rides the air until it eventually fades away.

“Cute,” someone says from behind him, a hand dropping down onto the top of his head.

He jumps approximately a foot in the air and nearly falls on his face as he scrambles to get his legs out from underneath him and stand up.

Eliot is standing there with his eyes comically wide and his hands raised in the air, but the sight doesn’t comfort him. Instead, it sends his heart rate that much higher and he watches as the slightly amused expression falls from Eliot’s face and is slowly replaced with realization. 

“Shit, Q, I’m sorry,” Eliot says, taking a hurried step backward. 

Quentin shakes his head, says, “No, it’s okay.” He pulls in a shaky breath, pressing a hand against his sternum and willing his heart to return to its proper place in his chest from where it’s currently lodged in his throat. “I just didn’t hear you come out. That’s all.”

“That’s not all.” He looks pained and he’s shifting on his feet like he wants to take another step backward. Or maybe just go back inside all together. “You haven’t told me everything, have you?”

And that – that has Quentin barking out a sharp, humorless laugh as a surge of anger washes over him. “Yeah, well,” he says before he can stop himself. “You’re one to talk.”

He regrets it the instance he spits the words out and his regret increases tenfold as Eliot flinches, his already wan face growing that much paler. 

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I’m just – I’m just being an asshole. Will you sit with me?” He gestures to the empty chairs. “For a bit?”

Eliot nods, so Quentin picks up the cigarette butt he’d dropped and sits back down in his chair. It still has a few drags left on it, but he puts it out in the ashtray as Eliot settles down in the chair beside him on his left and they watch the wisps of smoke rise up and disappear in front of them. 

“You told me last night the Monster didn’t hurt you,” Eliot says after a long moment of silence. “But I think he did.”

“God, was that really just last night?” Quentin asks, both out of genuine disbelief and also as a stalling tactic. “It feels like it’s been a lifetime.” Though he supposes living an entire lifetime in a day is kind of their thing at this point. Of course, the problem with sharing a lifetime with someone is they end up knowing you pretty well, so Eliot knows exactly what he’s trying to do and waits for Quentin to speak. He relents. “He hurt me a little bit.”

“How?”

Quentin folds his legs up underneath him and turns to Eliot. “Is it really going to make you feel better, knowing?” He feels like a hypocrite asking considering the conversation he’d had with Alice a few hours earlier, but he just – he doesn’t want to talk about the Monster and he doesn’t want to see the inevitable hurt on Eliot’s face when he tells him. 

“Of course not, but I still want to know.”

Quentin curls up a little tighter, resting his chin on his knees and wrapping his arms loosely around his legs for balance. “He broke my arm,” he says, focusing on a spot off in the distance. “But he healed it pretty quickly afterwards. That was really the worst of it.”

“But not all of it,” Eliot says after a brief silence, voice measured. 

Quentin shakes his head. “He – well. We got into an argument toward the end and he tossed me into a table and choked me, but it was only for a few seconds. Not even long enough to leave a bruise.”

It takes longer for Eliot to reply this time and he isn’t quite capable of keeping the distress out of his voice when he asks, “What did you get into an argument about, exactly?”

“You. He was getting reckless and I was worried you’d die before we got the chance to get him out of you. I told him if he didn’t start taking care of your body, I’d stop helping him regardless of what he did to me.” He glances over at Eliot and quirks an eyebrow at him. “I should have pushed for a haircut, but I was more focused on the pills and the drinking at the time. Sorry.”

“Oh, no worries,” Eliot says, trying for the light tone Quentin’s adopted. He falls short, his chin beginning to tremble and his nose reddening – the first signs he’s about to cry. “You stood up to a monster so scary even the gods were afraid of him for me, so. All’s forgiven.” His whole face crumples in on itself then. “You died for me, Q.”

“And then you saved me.” Quentin unfolds himself and turns his whole body toward him, reaching out a hand. Eliot takes it, looking down at the wrist brace and fiddling with it as he tries to calm himself down. “El, hey. It’s okay. Really.”

They descend into silence for a while, and Quentin takes it as an opportunity to really look Eliot over. Make sure he’s okay. He hasn’t shaved, but he’s clearly taken a shower at some point since Quentin saw him last, his dark curls looking clean and soft where they’re pulled back from his face. A few stray curls frame his face and he suddenly gets why Eliot was always pulling at the pieces of hair that escaped from the tie when his own hair was longer. The urge is strong, but he pushes it away, finishes his inspection. The nap earlier did nothing to help with the dark circles under his eyes and he looks like he’s lost some weight, but beyond the mostly healed wound under his shirt there’s really nothing else wrong with him physically. It’s all the other shit that’s going to take him a while to recover from. 

Eliot clears his throat. “Do you remember,” he says quietly, “when I broke free of the Monster’s hold on me to tell you I was alive?” 

Quentin laughs, a little disbelieving, and squeezes Eliot’s hand. “You mean when you told me you were alive roughly thirty seconds before we tried to kill you? Yeah, I think I remember that.”

“Don’t be a brat,” Eliot says, lips quirking up. It’s small and a little wobbly, but it’s a smile nonetheless. “Well, doing that was a bit of a lengthy process.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I had to take this god-awful trip down memory lane of all my worst, most painful memories I’ve spent a lot of time and effort repressing to do it.” His smile fades, his eyes going unfocused. “And Q, there was a lot. Like I had a chalkboard and an organizational system and everything.”

Quentin listens with mild horror as Eliot describes how the Monster’s previous hosts remained inside him even after their bodies had died. How venturing out of the Happy Place left them exposed to the other creatures the old gods had locked into Blackspire with him, the ones he ate. How Ora had tried to get out and been ripped apart. How Eliot had created backup out of memories of them despite Charlton’s protests and started working through his memories to find the door. 

“So, which one was it?” He hates the thought of Eliot having so many painful memories to choose from that he’d actually had to make a cohesive, detailed plan of attack to find the correct one, but he won’t lie and say he isn’t curious.

“The one where we got all of our memories back from the mosaic timeline.” It looks like it takes a Herculean level of strength, but Eliot tears his eyes away from whatever spot in the distance he’s been focused on and turns to Quentin. “The one where I turned you down because I was a coward.”

Oh.

And that – he’s not sure what he was expecting it to be, but it definitely wasn’t that. Maybe when he accidentally killed his school bully or when he had to kill Mike to save Dean Fogg’s life. Quentin’s been hopeful, but still laboring under the assumption that everything Eliot said to him in that letter was born from the pain of losing him rather than a genuine epiphany of his feelings.

“You weren’t being a coward,” he protests. “I should have given you time to process everything before I said anything.”

Eliot’s expression goes unbelievably fond and he gives Quentin’s hand a squeeze, reaches the other one up to push his hair behind his ears. “That’s kind of you to say, baby, but I really was.” Quentin’s heart cracks open at the old nickname. Eliot had started using it when they first started sleeping together to embarrass him, but somewhere along the way it became a genuine term of love and affection. It’s been a long time since he’s heard it. “I didn’t need time to process. I didn’t say no because I wasn’t sure or because I didn’t want you. I said no because I really, really wanted you.”

“But you weren’t sure I’d choose you, given a choice.” 

Eliot’s expression turns pained as his own words are parroted back at him. “I promised myself if I ever got my body back, I would tell you everything. And then I woke up in the Infirmary and Margo was crying and – and I knew. Because I was alive and there’s no one else besides you that Margo would cry over like that. I didn’t even get to talk to you, Q,” Eliot says, voice breaking. “You died not knowing–”

“I did know,” Quentin interrupts, desperate to ease even some of the pain he can see all over Eliot’s face. “I was there, at the funeral you guys had for me. Penny, our Penny – he brought me there, so I could see all of you one last time. I saw you toss the peach into the fire and I – I knew, El.”

And Eliot just – promptly bursts into tears. Not the awful sobbing of this morning when the memories had hit him, but more than a slow trickle. He pulls his hand free of Quentin’s and brings both of them up to his face, digging his fingers into his eyes like he’s trying to physically force them to stop.

Quentin slides his chair closer to Eliot’s so he can reach out and pull him against him. Eliot goes without a struggle, tucking his face against Quentin’s neck and wrapping his arms around his back. Quentin makes hushed, soothing sounds low in his throat and runs a hand up and down Eliot’s back in a steady rhythm as hot tears drip down his neck, his own eyes beginning to sting with emotion. He distinctly remembers that awful, crushing pain he’d felt when Eliot had succumbed to old age in the mosaic timeline and the more recent pain of having the Monster tell him Eliot was dead while wearing his face. 

Like something fundamental had been torn from him that he’d never get back and never fully recover from.

They stay like that for a long, long time – until Quentin’s neck begins to ache from its upturned angle where his chin is resting on Eliot’s shoulder and Eliot starts shifting in his chair like he too is starting to feel their size difference. His back, maybe, or the mostly healed wound on his stomach. Quentin gives him one last squeeze before pulling back slightly, just enough to adjust their position. 

Eliot’s eyes are red and swollen, and Quentin brushes the remaining tears away. Eliot turns into the gesture, holding Quentin’s hand against his face like he did in the Infirmary last night. “I want to try again, Q,” Eliot says without preamble, voice rough. “I understand if you need time or – or you aren’t sure. But I love you and I want to give us a shot.”

“You’re my first choice too. Always.” He leans forward, presses his forehead up against Eliot’s. They stay like that for a few moments, just breathing each other's air, before Quentin pulls back. “And I want to try too, but I want us to be completely honest with each other going into this.”

Eliot pulls back at that, eyelids fluttering open, and his brows furrow as he frowns. “Q, I’ve been–”

“I know,” Quentin says, reaching a thumb up to smooth the wrinkle. “I know you have, so now it’s my turn.” He inhales, hopes he’s not about to ruin this before it even begins. “Alice and I agreed to get back together a couple of days ago.” Eliot jerks back at that, and he sees all his insecurities of not being Quentin’s first choice rise to the surface, so he clutches at Eliot’s shirt to keep him in place. “But it was a mistake and I broke it off with her a few hours ago. The only reason I didn’t do it sooner was because I was with you.”

“Do you still – love her?” Eliot asks haltingly.

“There’s always going to be a part of me that loves her,” he admits because it’s true and it’s important Eliot knows that. “But I don’t want to be with her. I haven’t in a long time. The only reason I asked her to try again was because – El, these last few months have been really bad for me. I was drowning and I – it’s so, so selfish, but I just wanted to feel better. I thought if I was with her, I’d feel like – I don’t know. Like I could breathe again.” 

“Okay, then,” he says after a brief pause, and Quentin searches his face for any signs of dishonesty or hesitation, but he doesn’t find any. “If you tell me you don’t want to be with her, I believe you.”

“There’s – there’s more,” Quentin adds before he loses his nerve. “There’s this room you go to when you die where you – you confess everything, I guess, to someone. Everything you wouldn’t or couldn’t say when you were alive. I guess our Penny was assigned my case or – or maybe he chose to take my confession, but he was there in the room with me.” He can’t bring himself to look Eliot in the eye for this part, so he reaches for one of his hands and starts playing with his fingers instead. “And I told Penny I wasn’t sure if I did what I did to save everyone or if I just saw an out.”

Quentin can see from the corner of his eye Eliot shift in his seat, hears him clear his throat. “And now?” Eliot asks cautiously. 

“Honestly, El,” he says, voice wobbly. “I’m still not sure. Like I said, the last few months have been really bad. Between losing my dad and you being possessed, I’ve been spiraling. I want to tell you I sacrificed myself for the greater good, so Everett wouldn’t get his hands on that much power, but I don’t – I don’t know if I would have made that same choice if things were better.”

He hears Eliot pull in a deep breath, exhaling softly. “Look at me, Q,” he murmurs, and Quentin reluctantly looks up. Eliot looks – worried, of course, and upset, but there’s also a lot of understanding and love on his face. _No hint of judgement,_ Quentin notes, and he breathes a little easier. “Everything is a little fucked up right now, but it’s going to be okay. I’m here now and we’re going to deal with this together, whether that’s finding you someone to talk to or getting new meds or – whatever you need. You’re not broken.”

And that – it feels like he breathes for the first time in months, hearing those words. He’s used that word to refer to himself most of his life and he’s had enough therapy to know he internalized it. _My brain breaks sometimes,_ he’d always say. He’d said that to Eliot six months into the mosaic quest during his first depressive episode there, when not even Fillory’s opium laced air could stand in for his meds anymore. “Don’t be silly,” Eliot had said with a frown. “Your brain isn’t broken. Depression is just a motherfucker.” And then he’d proceeded to take care of Quentin over the next few days when he didn’t have the energy to get out of bed and every other time it happened for the next fifty years.

“I’m here too, you know,” Quentin says. “For you, whenever you need it. However you need it. No more repressing chalkboard’s worth of shit."

Eliot huffs out a laugh and reaches a hand up, first to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear and then to pull him in by the back of his neck and press their lips together. It’s barely more than a peck – all chaste and brief and soft, but it feels like the beginning of something. Of everything.

“Yeah, Q,” Eliot says, eyes crinkling up at the corners. “We’re both gonna be okay.”

_See you soon. Love, Eliot._


End file.
